Checkpoint: No, Space Cannot Become Private Property
Jeremy Thomas
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. Neil Armstrong’s famous broadcast from the surface of the Moon, in which the “a” was lost in transmission, has been etched into the public imagination ever since the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. For centuries humans have dreamt of leaving Earth for other worlds beyond the stars. From Victorian writers like H.G. Wells to television series like Star Trek, our predictions for the future consistently show human progress headed in one direction. On a path to exploring the farthest reaches of space, the final frontier.
Until now, space travel has almost exclusively been the domain of national governments. America, Russia, China and others have spent vast sums of money propelling their astronauts beyond the Earth’s gravitational pull. The 2020 budget for the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities is $2.77 billion. The China National Space Administration plans to spend around $11 billion. For NASA, it’s $22.6 billion.
The domination of government programs in the space race ended on 30 May 2020. SpaceX, founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk, succeeded in launching its Crew Dragon capsule into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket, despite some weather related delays. The capsule brought NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, where they will remain for the next one to four months.
The Crew Dragon launch marks the beginning of the private sector’s role in space travel and exploration, and that role is only going to expand as times goes on. Musk has made no secret of his desire to lead humanity in the colonization of other planets. First Mars, and then more planets even beyond our own solar system. As with any act of colonization, however, the treatment of the resources discovered in uncharted territory must force humankind to question who the beneficiaries are.
When King Leopold II of Belgium founded the Congo Free State in 1885, it was not as a colony of Belgium but as his own private property. His ownership of the land, along with its people and resources, allowed him to amass a huge fortune from the trade of ivory and rubber. Around 10 million Congolese, or half the population, died under his rule. Because the Congo was Leopold’s private property, ordinary Belgians saw little of the wealth he created at the expense of those lives.
Resources are finite on our planet, but in an ever expanding universe the resources off-world are, theoretically, infinite. The metals we use in so many aspects of modern society, from the copper in our wires to the gold in our computers and so much more can be mined from asteroids long after they run out here on Earth. Even water, one of the most necessary components for life as we know it, can be mined in space rather expensively transported from the Earth’s surface.
Without delving too far into the realm of science fiction, it’s possible that elements not even placed on the periodic table yet, with applications scientists can’t even comprehend right now, are waiting to be discovered in galaxies far, far away. The question that needs to be asked is: where will the wealth created by these resources go?
The U.S. Space Act of 2015 does not allow for ownership over celestial bodies, but it does grant private ownership over resources extracted from those bodies. With Trump’s creation of the United States Space Force at the end of last year, and the U.S. Armed Forces’ long-standing tradition of engaging in violent conflict to protect the commercial interests of private companies, it’s not an entirely far-fetched idea that our star wars will be fought for the protection of commercial profits.
With the might of the American military’s newest branch firmly behind them, billionaire entrepreneurs like Musk could become new incarnations of King Leopold. They will amass the wealth created from space exploration for themselves, widening the wealth gap that already exists in our society. With the resources of one planet, the eight richest men control as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion, or half the Earth’s population. If the infinite resources of the universe are put at their fingertips, there is nothing to indicate that they will not simply enrich themselves further while leaving the poorest among us to stagnate.
The resources discovered out among the stars must be put under the communal ownership of the people of earth. We may not yet know if we are alone in the universe, but in our dealings with space we must present a united front regardless. We must transcend national, ethnic and religious boundaries to take advantage of the opportunities space exploration will provide us. Private companies cannot be allowed to horde the wealth found beyond the confines of the Earth’s surface.
Many things science fiction writers have predicted have not come to pass. We still burn fossil fuels for energy. Our cars don’t fly. Enhancing our bodies with cybernetics is not a common procedure. However, space travel for the average man or woman gets closer and closer to being a reality every day and the colonization of other planets gets closer with it. Now is the time to be proactive in ensuring the equal distribution of extraterrestrial resources among all of Earth’s inhabitants, and by doing so ensuring a more equal and egalitarian society for future spare-faring generations.